I don't get Buddhism

Is Karma a Law of Nature?
It seems Matthew Gindin is destined to ask, and answer, this question.

After all, most of us know from practical experience that over and over and over again, the fact that someone behaves in a manner that brings pain and suffering to others, does not entail that in the end it will all come back around to get him. Just look at what the rich and the powerful right here on planet Earth have been able to get away with now for centuries. Is the man who runs that despicable sweatshop in some Third World hellhole going to eventually get what’s coming to him?

Well, yes, if you are a Christian and you have thought yourself into believing that “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”

But what if you are a Buddhist?

Thought-provoking is one thing. But how then are these thoughts made applicable to all of the terrible injustices that do occur day in and day out around the globe?

In India for example. Just ask the Muslims there of late.

What of karma then? With no God, what actual entity/mechanism/force are Buddhists relying on to make sure that karma is accounted for. Not just on this side of the grave but on the other side as well.

Okay, let’s go back to how Muslims have fared in India as a result of the coronavirus outbreak there: nytimes.com/2020/04/12/worl … gotry.html

If you are a Buddhist, how, in your view, will karma be made applicable here? What of those who have persecuted the Muslims there? And what of those who have been persecuted by Muslims themselves elsewhere? Or those persecuted by Christians or any other religious denomination that throughout history has sustained one or another inquisition, crusade, jihad or holy war?

What “rituals” are required of the players here in order that their own future is bright? And that, when karma comes around, their future is brighter still. And that, when they die, the karma that is their fate in the afterlife also as bright as can be.

Karma symbolizes ultimate justice.

He’s saying that he sees no ultimate justice and that there isn’t any.

(In his own passive-aggressive way, of course.)

That there is or is not ultimate Justice would require a God’s eye point of view. But there is Justice in Iambiguous’ heart or he wouldn’t have a problem with the fact that he cannot see it in the world. So did the authors of the Dhammapada, the Daodejing, and the Psalms of the Hebrew Bible.

Sigh…

We’ll need a context of course.

What I am proposing is that, given my attempts as a philosopher to probe the life that I have lived, I am no longer able to conclude that, re either a God or a No God moral and political narrative, an ultimate justice does in fact exist.

But: ultimate justice in regard to what particular human behaviors that come into conflict as a result of conflicting value judgments in what particular context?

Thus for those who believe that through the “real me” they have themselves come to conclude that ultimate justice does exist objectively in sync with their own understanding of “the right thing to do”, let’s focus in on experiences in their own life or situations we are all likely to be familiar with and explore this in conjunction with the components of our own moral philosophy.

As for my own so-called “passive-aggressive way”, what on earth does that mean?

For example, in regard to the arguments I made in reacting to your views on Communism, how did I display this tendency then?

Finally, I always come back to the gap between what any of us think about these things here and now and all that can be known about them given a complete understanding of human interactions…given a complete understanding of existence itself.

It means that you put questions into your posts but they are not questions at all … they are your statements, your assertions, your arguments.

It makes it look as if you are seeking answers when in fact you are simply telling people “how it is”. It makes it look as if you are open, when you are closed off to their answers. It makes it look as if you are not an objectivist, when you are being one.

Again, note specific examples of this in regard to our exchanges about Communism. And note how you yourself in reacting to my points, did not do this in turn.

I wasn’t telling people “how it is” in regard to Communism, abortion or to any other set of conflicting goods. I was suggesting only there appears [to me] to be a limit beyond which philosophers or ethicists or political scientists cannot go in pinning down [one way or the other] how all rational and virtuous men and women are obligated to think about these things.

That, instead, our reactions to these conflicts seem rooted more in the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.

Oh, and what of all the other points I raised above?

Before justice/karma became a putatively objective religious doctrine it was a goddess.

How Does a Buddhist Monk Face Death?
An e-mail interview in the New York Times between George Yancy and Geshe Dadul Namgyal, a Tibetan Buddhist monk

If somehow you can take these words and make them useful…make them meaningful and relevant insofar as you react to your own death…then he has been successful in delivering his message.

But from my frame of mind, reading this sort of thing is the equivalent of encountering a Hallmark greeting card…or interpreting a numbingly vague horoscope in the newspaper. In terms of both life and death, it really tells me nothing at all.

Virtually anyone can read it and fit it snuggly into lives that from day to day span the entire moral and political spectrum. Almost any behaviors can be rationalized because who is to say what it means to be connected to reality. It doesn’t even make the attempt to deal with the consequences of conflicting goods attached to one or another religious narrative that, down through the ages have precipiated all manner of ghastly human deaths.

It is just another “world of words” that some feel compelled to create and then sustain in their head because in there it really doesn’t matter the extent to which the dots can be connected between the words and the world that we live in. Only that in believing them it makes you feel less disturbed and perturbed about all the terrible things that can unfold on this side of the grave by feeling so much better about all the wonderful things that will unfold on the other side of it.

And I suspect my own inflection here encompasses some measure of the bitterness I feel at having lost the capacity to think myself into believing it as well.

You’re obsessed by tropes that you want others to believe that you don’t believe and you’re too complex to understand yourself.

You forgot this:

Right?

So, we have a Buddhist ‘wall of words’, which is associated with practices that have scientfic support that they help people

and we have your wall of words here, your practice, that has no backing behind it at all, scientific of otherwise. Yet you continue to produce your wall of words and will not try something that has more evidence behind it than your current behavior.

From here you ‘make them the issue’ which you just as not good when aimed at you, but par for your behavior aimed at others. That’s a context, and one in which you engage in at least two types of hypocrisy in a single post.

That’s a context relevant to your pain and bitterness. It’s your context.

Maybe if you can convince others that you don’t believe, it will help you overcome your fear that there may be an afterlife. ( Shrug.)

Sigh…

World of words, not wall. If you can even grasp the distinction.

I have noted on a number of posts above that Buddhism has helped many people to attain and then to sustain a disciplined, constructive frame of mind in their interactions with others from day to day.

My “thing” with religion however revolves far more around the existential relationship between morality on this side of the grave and immortality on the other side of it. As that relates to the extent to which any religious denomination is able to demonstrate [to me] that what they believe about this relationship is in fact true. True for all men and women who wish to be thought of as rational, as enlightened, as virtuous human beings.

Out in a particular set of circumstances where moral and political conflicts are rife. As a result of either God or No God moral narratives and political agendas.

The “issue” for me is always moral and political objectivism. And it’s inherent danger when either God or No God objectivists have been able to gain access to the power necessary to act on their conviction that those who are not “one of us” are the enemy. Cue human history for example.

At the same time, I am more than willing to concede that moral nihilism, whether embodied by the “show me the money” folks who own and operate the global economy, or by those individuals – sociopaths among others – who act on the moral dictum that “in the absence of God all things are permitted”, can be equally if not even more dangerous given particular sets of circumstances.

Yep, that’s what I think alright. You know, here and now.

Once again, Huh?!

My whole point is that my own argument here is just another existential contraption rooted in dasein. I can’t even convince myself that it reflects the optimal manner in which to grasp human interactions and “I” going back to whatever the explanation is for existence itself. Let alone that it reflects the most rational manner in which to think about the afterlife.

And where on earth did you pick up on the idea that I fear there is an afterlife?

Hell, I can’t even think myself into believing that beyond all doubt I have free will in regard to anything at all.

I merely speculate that your own peace of mind here is predicated not on what you yourself can demonstrate is true but only on that which you have managed to think up in your own head is true.

But, fuck that, right? As long as you can keep it up. All the way to the grave if possible.

Only I have to say that in discussing these things with me, you are rolling the dice.

After all, what if my points start to actually sink in? [-o<

Are you joking? Do you really imagine you’re bringing something new to me? Do you suppose that your caricature of a religion is a threat to me? I’ve stared into the abyss. You’ve said nothing new to me. My image of you is a lonely man walking backwards like a crab crying for others to join him in his absurd retreat from betterment. Why? I’m thinking cowardice. Courage isn’t a theme that I’ve seen you address.

Of course you’re only paraphrasing Karpel Tunnel, right?

On the other hand, does he know that?

Those were my thoughts. They had nothing to do with Karpal Tunnel. If our observations sound similar perhaps it’s because they’re converging on the same object i.e. you.

Buddha declined every request for a positive description of Nirvana, the unconditioned, insisting that it was “incomprehensible, indescribable, inconceivable, and unutterable”.